Breakthroughs with Bali’s best healer: all in an Ubud afternoon…

If you don’t believe in the power of Bali magic, or Bali healers in general, you should go and see Cokorda Rai anyway. I just had the privilege of seeing him for the second time (the first was over a year ago when I was writing Balilicious), on our way back from Uluwatu. I didn’t actually get anything done to me, but a guy we were with experienced a serious breakthrough with some emotional blocks and heart healing energies, and all the way back to Ubud the energy was high in the car. This man has some serious skills!

I wrote a bit about Cokorda Rai in Balilicious. Here’s a little edited excerpt if you’re interested. I wouldn’t hesitate to go and see him if there was anything wrong with me. I feel like some sort of weight has been lifted just by being in his presence for twenty minutes! OK… edited excerpt…

Mending hearts and other motors

There are fifty traditional healers in each district in Bali, compared to ten medical doctors. As an esteemed balian, Cokorda Rai has developed a rather unique way of diagnosis and treatment for illnesses and Jen and I got to witness a session today on a raised platform in his compound surrounded by trees. In describing what I saw it’s important to note that I really can’t explain what I saw. Not scientifically anyway.

‘You can damage their work and reputations by trying to explain how they do things,’ Surya (our guru) warned. I shut my notebook. Even having seen and heard the things I’ve seen and heard in Bali, this still goes beyond my realm of understanding and I really do think it would even if I spent a lifetime trying to wrap my head around it. That’s probably because it’s magic. And as we know by now, most of Bali’s magic isn’t meant to be understood.

Cokorda Rai, aged eighty-two, is honoured in Bali as a direct channel of divine knowledge, a practice he learned from what’s written in a series of wooden holy books called Lontar. Lontar are written in Sanskrit, Old Javanese and Balinese and hold a series of mantras, incantations (spells of sorts) and some drawings. These mystical books — each one long, hard and slim like a pile of stacked rulers bound with two threads — have been in his family for generations.

A young girl in her twenties sat down and from his seat behind her in a chair, Cokorda Rai started to rub her temples. I noticed he did this at the start of everyone’s treatment and Surya explained that this is how he connects with the patient’s twelve main meridians and determines what their problem is. Mid rub, his phone rang and we all waited with bated breath as he finished a conversation with someone loud on the other end.

The girl (from Russia it emerged) was then instructed to lie down and Cokorda Rai got out a short stick, which he used to poke the insides of her toes. He wasn’t doing it gently either … he was jabbing that tool hard into her flesh with intent. Most of these pokes rendered no reaction, apart from one which caused her to bolt upright and scream bloody murder. As if he’d been given all the proof he needed of her problem, a black marker pen was whipped out and Cokorda Rai started drawing a series of mystical looking symbols on her body just as his phone rang again.

The pen hovered over her as he jabbered away in Indonesian with the mobile pressed to his face. The girl sat up to look in bewilderment at the cosmic symbols on her stomach. It looked like a series of alien artworks, the kind of mural you might expect to be drawn before some fanciful cosmetic surgery on a spaceship. Eventually he hung up, pushed her backwards again and recommenced the scribbling.

‘He’s drawing a new organ,’ Surya whispered. We later learned that the girl had had surgery on her fallopian tubes and was worried she wouldn’t be able to have children.

‘All fix,’ Cokorda Rai announced moments later. And after a few more drawings, a bit of massage and rubbing some leaves into her body (and answering yet another call), he prodded the same area on her foot that had caused her to scream before. This time, she had no reaction at all.

Whimpering, another girl lay on the mat and sniffled miserably as Cokorda Rai jumped up with an agility that defied his years and stood on her feet. Surya was shaking his head empathetically by now. ‘Broken heart,’ he whispered to us. Ninety per cent of people he says come to him with a broken heart. Unsurprisingly perhaps, most are women.

‘A broken heart is just an energy block,’ Surya told us. ‘Most of it is in your mind and Cokorda Rai helps to shift it so the pain starts to fade. Sometimes it’s instant. Just watch …’

I had flashbacks to the French man, Matt and Peggy in the ashram. Energy blocks. All in your mind. Of course…

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